LETTER: Let’s raise our political debates

I would like to refute several arguments made in an open letter written by Roger Arthur in your letters section of the WSCT 19/01/17 release.

He makes the claim that the NHS could be funded by the £120 billion we would save by leaving the EU, citing the Taxpayers’ Alliance. In the same piece, Mr Arthur argues that the UK pays to the EU ‘£100 billion pa’.

This is a blatant lie that we heard throughout the referendum campaign; Full Fact, the UK independent fact checking charity, states that the UK’s EU contribution in 2015 was at a net contribution cost of £8 billion, a far cry from the £100 billion Roger Arthur claims.

He also goes on to say that billions of pounds from tax avoidance can be saved, and given to the NHS, arguing it’s ‘facilitated by EU regulations’. How much could we save then? Which specific EU regulations are you referring to Mr Arthur?

These sort of deliberate and meaningless claims are appalling; but hey The Oxford Dictionary did announce that their word of the year was ‘Post-Truth’- relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appealing to emotion and personal belief.

Rather fitting then, that the Horsham UKIP candidate of the 2015 General Election and Horsham local Vote Leave campaigner would advocate money to be saved from leaving the EU when, as a Vote Leave campaigner, he is associated with the pretence of the claim from Vote Leave that the UK can save £350 million a week by leaving the EU.

Even Boris Johnson, a former leader of Vote Leave, admitted during the referendum campaign that this was in fact, not true.

It is true that there is a NHS funding crisis in the UK. But making these sorts of falsehood statements, I believe, is intolerable and should have no place in political debate; especially when the stakes are so high!

Matthew Gaffar

Church Lane, Broadbridge Heath

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